Doodle therapy, the early days.
The extent to which you lose energy when you’re sick isn’t always apparent until you start getting well. When my COVID-19-like symptoms peeked around the pain of a kidney infection in early March, momentum kept me going for about a week. By Week Two, all energy reserves were depleted and all that was left was a singular conviction: go to bed and rest, dummy.
Weeks later, when the see-saw of my (still undiagnosed) Coronavirus the Infection began to decline for the final (?) time, so too began the slow return of being “me.” I knew it, because I sort of felt like doing something. At least as much as my body would allow.
Still, I didn’t fully appreciate the scope of what Coronavirus the Pandemic had taken away until I cough-laughed at some silly meme my sister texted to me. Then it hit me: I hadn’t had a good guffaw in ages.
According to Dr. Alex Lickerman, being able to laugh appropriately at traumatic events can help prepare us to endure them. At my sickest, I did try to muster that coping mechanism: I binge-watched comedies, I read The Borowitz Report, and I shared photos of my dog doing hilarious things. Anything to get my laugh muscle memory to return.
When my sense of humor reemerged, it brought with it something I’d been missing so deeply, I cried when I realized it was back. “It” doesn’t have a name but loosely, it’s a desire to express myself artistically. This state of being is different than what I know as “creative inspiration,” which for me announces itself as a roughly doodled cartoon light bulb over my head. There was not yet a bulb, but for the first time in a month, I wanted to have ideas.
Studies have shown that mood can have a huge impact on creativity. According to Dr. Gavin Davey, there’s an enduring belief that creativity in the arts is associated with unhealthy mood swings, episodes of depression, and even psychological illness like bipolar disorder. Just look at Brian Wilson, T.S. Eliot, Mark Twain and Vincent Van Gogh.
Fortunately, my artistic diagnosis reveals nothing more or less than a direct psychological connection between my funny bone and my muse. As that connection began repairing itself, my first coronavirus-related idea was to laugh at the things within my quarantined arms reach: Netflix and self-pity:
Also within arm’s reach was my trusty camera and my laptop, but for some reason (one Dr. Davey could probably explain), I knew they couldn’t take me where I needed to go. Instead, I turned to an old sketchpad, a fistfuls of colored Sharpies, and those pens that write in ink you can sort of erase.
Every day since that Tiger King pie chart came out of me, I’ve picked up a pen and doodled. Some doodles I’ve finished, some I never will, and some I’ll never share. I don’t know if they're art, but they’re definitely ends and means: forms of creative expression and sources of creative inspiration.
Idea light bulb status? Powered up.
Source of medical studies and references: Psychology Today
